Pretty Girl Gone (24 page)

I rested my elbow on the table and my cheek against my hand and slowly sipped the beer. Normally, I didn’t care that much about the NBA. Pro basketball was way down on my list of favorite sports, somewhere between tennis and World Cup Soccer. Yet I couldn’t get enough of the game being shown on the big screen mounted above the bar. I had no idea which teams were playing. Hell, the only reason I was sure it was pro ball instead of college was because instead of the girl next door, the cheerleaders looked like women I had once arrested for solicitation.

“You seem tense,” a voice said.

I looked up without adjusting my posture. Danny Mallinger hovered above the table. Instead of her uniform, she was wearing a green turtleneck sweater under a worn leather jacket that wasn’t too different from my own. Her hands were thrust into the front pockets of her jeans, her jeans tucked inside long leather boots. I liked her. Liked her face. Her eyes. Liked her hair and the way she pulled it back behind her ears. I liked the way she spoke, too, and some of the things she said that were
close to witty. I liked the way she seemed to swagger even when standing still—a rare gift in a woman.

“I’m not tense,” I told her. “I’m just terribly, terribly alert.”

“I can tell.”

“Sit.”

“Thank you.”

Mallinger pulled out a chair opposite mine.

“There’re a couple of girls at the bar you could roust if you’re working,” I told her.

“I came looking for you.”

“Why?”

“To make sure you’re all right.”

“Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

“Getting run off the highway, seeing a guy’s head half blown off—it shook me up. ‘Course, I’m small town. Might be you see a lot of that sort of thing in the big city.”

I raised my beer.

“All the time.”

And drank.

“Drowning your sorrows, are you?” she asked.

“Did you come here to give me a lecture on sobriety, facing my demons, that sort of thing?”

“No.”

To prove it, she waved at the bartender. The bartender must have known her because he brought a vodka gimlet for Mallinger and another Sam Adams for me without being asked.

“I’ve been thinking about Chief Bohlig,” she said.

“Oh?”

“I believe him. I don’t think there’s a cover-up. I think he dumped the file because it was thirty years old. He dumped a lot of files.”

“You judge people according to your own behavior,” I told her. “You can’t imagine doing something like that, so you can’t imagine why
someone else would. Like most honest people, Chief, you think everyone is basically honest, too. They’re not.”

“That’s a cynical attitude.”

I watched her out of the corner of my eye.

“You’re right,” I said. “You are small town.”

We sat silently, watching the game and sipping our beverages. After a few minutes, Mallinger asked, “What kind of music do you like?” I don’t think she really cared. It was just something to say.

“Jazz mostly, but also blues, some rock ’n’ roll. You?”

“You’re probably going to laugh.”

“Not even if I thought it was funny.”

“I listen to Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart . . .”

“Ah, the big bands. What’s funny about that?”

Mallinger didn’t say. Instead, she took another sip of her gimlet. Thus fortified, she said, “What happened today, do you want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly.”

“No?”

“Talk, society tells us these days. Something upsets you, talk about it. Talk to family. Talk to friends. To qualified therapists. Whatever. Talk your problems away. Only the guys who fought World War II, the guys like my father who fought in Korea, who saw hell up close and personal, they didn’t talk about it. Yet they built a nation of astonishing strength and vitality. Talk is overrated.”

“That makes sense,” Mallinger said.

I watched her while she took a sip of vodka.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Me? No. It’s just . . .”

“Chief?”

“It’s just that I don’t know how to behave. No one ever taught me what I should do when I see—when I see things like that. Chief Bohlig, he never . . . I know you’ve seen things. I know you’ve done things.”

“Yes, I have.”

“The suspect you killed, with the shotgun . . . I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve never even discharged my weapon except on the range.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“I’ve never even seen a man who was shot before—not until today. I thought . . .”

“You thought I could tell you what to feel?”

“Something like that.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel crappy.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I guess it’s okay as long as you feel something.”

“How did you feel? When you killed the suspect, what was it like?”

“Messy.”

“No. I mean, how did you feel?”

“I just told you.”

She thought about it for a moment, then said, “How do you live with it?”

“I remind myself that I did the right thing, that I saved lives by killing the suspect. I remind myself that that was my job, to protect and serve the public. I remind myself that the world is a better place because I did my job. I remind myself that I’m doing good, that I’m one of the good guys.”

“That works,” Mallinger said.

“It works for me, Chief. The thing is, there is no answer, no formula, no set of rules to follow. It’s like being an alcoholic. You deal with it day by day, some days being better than others, and any code, any philosophy that gets you from today to tomorrow is a good one.”

“That’s a hard way to live.”

“Yes, it is.”

We finished our drinks, ordered another round.

“For what it’s worth, Chief. I thought you behaved very well today. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“You can call me Danny.”

“I should have known Josie was on meth, Danny,” I said. “The way he kept scratching himself, how his teeth were rotting out. Those are pretty obvious signs, but I didn’t see them.”

“Would it have made any difference?”

“Probably not.”

We watched the game some more. At the same time, I was aware that something was happening between us. Something cellular. I felt my body vibrating like the strings of a harp. Suddenly, Danny seemed very sexy to me. It could be the alcohol, I knew. Or the incredible darkness that had seeped into my soul. I didn’t analyze it. I didn’t want to.

On the TV, a ref blew a whistle, signaling time-out. The game was replaced by a commercial.

“I’m not gay,” I said.

“What?”

“I’m not gay. I’m not married or engaged. Just in case you were thinking that.”

“Why would I think that?”

“Because I haven’t hit on you yet.”

“I noticed.”

“I thought you might be wondering why.”

“Why?”

“I figure everyone tells you that you’re lovely, that you’re beautiful. I figure everyone tells you that you could start a parade just by crossing the street and that you must get pretty bored hearing it all the time.”

“Exhausting,” she said, having fun with it.

“So I decided I would try to impress you with my maturity and intellectual depth. Only there’s a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t have any.”

Mallinger laughed. She couldn’t help herself.

I lifted my legs off the chair and swung them under the table, brushing her knee with my knee.

“Do that again,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Make me laugh.”

I did.

Yet it wasn’t enough. Almost, but not quite. Not the laughter or the drinks. The gloomy feeling remained, fed by tiny reminders of Bloom and high-speed duels and fights outside restaurants and Greg Schroeder lurking in the shadows. It was still there when I announced that I was going back to my room and Danny volunteered to walk with me and I welcomed her.

Outside my room, I kissed her on the right cheek. I didn’t say anything. I just reached my arm a little around her waist, not quite a hug, and I kissed her cheek.

She turned her mouth and kissed me back—on the lips. The kiss lasted longer than it had any right to, and near the end of it Danny moaned, not with passion or pain, but with relief. I broke off the kiss and examined her face—Danny’s face. Not Bloom’s. Not Elizabeth’s. Danny’s. It was a nice face. Without trickery, without guile or deceit. I kissed her again.

In my imagination, Mallinger’s body was mostly muscle. In reality, there was a fleshiness about her that could easily turn to fat if she didn’t exercise, and for a moment I actually considered telling her so before purging the thought from my head in horror. What was I thinking?
You’re not thinking, that’s the whole thing,
my inner voice told me. I felt giddy with excitement and at the same time felt that my excitement was somehow lewd, as if I was taking pleasure in a perversion—a thought probably caused by the knowledge that I was betraying Nina. I pushed
that aside, too. Instead, I lost myself in the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings my heightened senses brought to me, the softness of Danny’s skin and the scent of her and the surprising strength of her and the heat of her body when I entered her. I felt sensations—sensations gamblers must feel, sensations I found immensely pleasurable—and they kept coming and coming—until tenderness turned to sleep and night became morning.

Danny was standing at the window, looking out on the parking lot beyond. Early dawn circled her naked body.

“What is it?” I asked, just to be saying something.

“I should leave now.”

“You don’t need to.”

“It wouldn’t do for the chief of police to be seen leaving a strange man’s motel room.”

I objected to “strange man,” but said nothing. I slid out of bed and came up behind her. I rested my hands on her shoulders.

“Don’t do that,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

“I can’t stay. I have to go home. I have to put on makeup.”

“I didn’t know you wore makeup.”

“I do. I do wear makeup. It comes with the job.”

She turned and kissed me just as she had outside the motel room door several hours earlier. When she finished, she said, “Go back to bed.” I did, but she didn’t join me.

I woke up feeling guilty as hell. Slants of sunlight fell across my face like the beams of interrogation lamps. I turned my head away. A song played in my brain, a song I knew as a child—the same song that was there just before I fell asleep after making love to Danny Mallinger. “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.”

“You’re one sick puppy, McKenzie,” I told myself.

I went naked to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. That wasn’t going to do it, so I took a shower, first cold and then as hot as I could stand it. Afterward, I swiped the steam from the mirror and stared at myself.

“Who do you think you are?” I asked aloud.

I thought of Nina Truhler. She deserved better than someone like me.

My cell phone played its tinny melody and for a moment I was seized with panic.

It’s her. What should I say?

Only a glance at the numerical display told me I was wrong.

“Hi, Bobby,” I said.

A fist of cold air gripped me as I stepped out of the bathroom. Goose bumps formed on my naked flesh and my body shivered.

“Good morning,” Dunston said.

“What time is it?”

“Almost nine. Rough night, McKenzie?”

“Long night, anyway.”

“I have the information you need.”

“Hang on a sec.” I went to the small table in the corner of the room where I found my notebook. “What do you have?”

“Want me to read it all to you or just give you the pertinent details?”

“Details.”

“Let’s see . . . Office of Nicholas County Coroner. Want the file number?”

“Not now.”

“Decedent—Elizabeth Mary Rogers. Age—seventeen. Sex—female. Place of death—Victoria, Minnesota. Time of death—the coroner estimates death occurred between 2200 hours Saturday, March 15 and 0200 Sunday, March 16. Cause of death—she had a crushed larynx, resulting in acute asphyxiation. She died hard, Mac. The reports says, let’s see—‘indicates that the victim lived four to six minutes after the wound was received.’ ”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. The coroner believes the larynx was crushed by hand—with the thumbs pressing inward—from the front—the killer was facing the victim—where is it?—skin and blood were found under the fingernails of the index and middle fingers of the victim’s right hand classified as type O positive. She fought back, scratched him good.”

“Just a second.”

I wrote swiftly, trying not to see Elizabeth’s face as I did. A hard rap on my door distracted me.

“Hang on, someone’s knocking.”

I carried the phone, pressed against my ear, to the door. I looked through the spy hole. I dropped the phone on the bed, grabbed my jeans, and slipped into them.

“Hey, babe,” Danny Mallinger said when I opened the door. She was dressed in her police uniform and holding a cardboard cup holder containing two large coffees.

“I’m on the phone,” I told her. I retrieved the cell from the bed, and retreated to the table.

“Sorry about that,” I said.

“ ‘Hey, babe?’ ”

“It’s not what you think, Bobby.”

“Of course it is. You are such a slut, McKenzie.” In Bobby’s book, that was a good thing.

“Cut it out,” I told him.

“Where was I?” He took a deep breath. “Indications are that the victim engaged in sexual intercourse with multiple partners shortly before she was killed. Less than an hour.”

“Multiple partners?”

“Let’s see. Presence of sperm—microscopic examination—she had intercourse with a type A negative and a type B positive secreter. They found male pubic hair, consistent with a type O positive, so that’s three at least.”

“At least?”

“There could have been more than three. Back in those days the best they could do was ABO blood typing. They couldn’t identify nonsecreters and they couldn’t separate, say, one O pos from a second O pos.”

“She was gang-raped.”

The words tasted bitter in my mouth.

“Not necessarily. The report—the coroner said he couldn’t determine whether the sex was consensual or nonconsensual. There was no physical trauma, Mac. No bruising, no contusions, or lacerations. Except for her throat, there wasn’t a mark on her. There’s one other thing
to consider. An alcohol analysis was performed on spleen tissue and was 0.144 grams over 100 grams.”